Oscar Pistorius is back in court as his defense team continued to call witnesses.

The defense psychiatrist, Dr. Meryl Vorster, testified as to Oscar's vulnerability as a double amputee, and the prosecutor asked to have the trial delayed and Oscar sent for a 30 day mental evaluation.

This is gamesmanship. The witness clearly stated Oscar knew the difference between right and wrong. There's no indication or defense claim he was insane or suffering from diminished capacity such that he couldn't appreciate the nature of his actions at the time of the shooting.

The Aspen Times has an in-depth article about the largest marijuana grow site in the state. Turned down by Aspen, the facility ended up taking over the old Coors warehouse in nearby Glenwood Springs.

It's located in Glenwood Springs and owned by Ron Radkte of Green Dragon. The building is 26,000 square feet, enough to make it the state's biggest so far, but by the time Radkte is finished with improvements, there will be more than 60,000 square feet of grow space and storage.

Radkte is committed to both the quality of his product and environmental concerns. It sounds like the "Whole Foods" of marijuana: [More...]

David Cole in the New York Review of Books has a new article, "We Kill People for Metadata" on the mistaken notion that the NSA's collection of metadata in its pursuit of terrorists is no big deal because it does not collect the content of communications, only details about them. First he quotes NSA counsel Stewart Baker:

“Metadata absolutely tells you everything about somebody’s life. If you have enough metadata, you don’t really need content.”

He then quotes General Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA and the CIA:

“We kill people based on metadata.”

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Glenn Greenwald has written a new book, No Place to Hide, that is getting great reviews. It's about the chaos in the hours and days following the Edward Snowden disclosures. The Guardian has an excerpt here. From Amazon's page on the book:

Now for the first time, Greenwald fits all the pieces together, recounting his high-intensity ten-day trip to Hong Kong, examining the broader implications of the surveillance detailed in his reporting for The Guardian, and revealing fresh information on the NSA’s unprecedented abuse of power with never-before-seen documents entrusted to him by Snowden himself.

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To all our readers who are Moms, we wish you a very Happy Mother's Day. And for those of you who are not, if your mom is still around, be thankful and don't forget to call.

Today is the 100th anniversary of the holiday -- it was President Woodrow Wilson in 1914 who declared the second Sunday in May would be Mother's Day.

Colorado is getting a big snow storm today -- there are already 16 weather alerts up from the National Weather Service.

Enjoy the day, this is an open thread, all topics welcome.

My posts all week seem mostly drug-related, even more so than usual. It may be because of work, or it may be the result of spending two hours a night watching El Capo 3 and La Viuda Negra. El Capo 3 actually takes more time, because the station comes in so weakly, even with an amplified antenna, I end up re-watching it online afterwards, courtesy of some sites in Pakistan, South America or Europe. [More...]

Via Sentencing Law and Policy: Check out this new law review article by Law Professor Shima Baradaran. It debunks the link between drug crimes and violence.

[This article] demonstrates that a connection between drugs and violence is not supported by historical arrest data, current research, or independent empirical evidence. That there is little evidence to support the assumption that drugs cause violence is an important insight, because the assumed causal link between drugs and violence forms the foundation of a significant amount of case law, statutes, and commentary.

In particular, the presumed connection between drugs and violence has reduced constitutional protections, misled government resources, and resulted in the unnecessary incarceration of a large proportion of non-violent Americans. In short, if drugs do not cause violence — and the empirical evidence discussed in this Article suggests they do not — then America needs to rethink its entire approach to drug policy.

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Remember the lawsuit filed by a group of contract translators for the DEA who translated Spanish wiretaps over polygraph examinations?

The DEA has settled with the translators, and agreed to pay 14 contractors $500,000. [More...]

The Department of Justice is seeking approval for a change in the federal rule applicable to issuance of search warrants. DOJ wants U.S. Magistrate judges to be able, under Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, to authorize computer searches even when they don't know the location of the computer or whether it's in that Magistrate's district. If the DOJ can access the computer remotely to search it, it doesn't want to be hamstrung by "technicalities" like which district the computer is in, or just as importantly, having to leave a physical notice at the site of the search.

The rule change has already passed its first hurdle and will come up again at a meeting of the committee later this month.

Here is the proposed new rule. Here are 5 pages from the 1100 page report describing the change and DOJ's justification for it (begins at bottom of first page). [More...]

I have a lot of news to catch up on. Yesterday I gave a Continuing Legal Eduction lecture on the federal response to Colorado's marijuana laws. With all the new developments the past two weeks, (the new banking law and the new Spice and warehouse indictments) there was a lot to review.

I've also been following the kidnap and murder of 23 year old Yuriana Castillo-Torres, the former girlfriend or wife of "El Chino" Antrax (and mother of one of his children). El Chino is Jose Rodrigo Áriechaga Gamboa, the alleged sicario for Zambada-Garcia and Sinaloa, arrested in Amsterdam in January at the request of the U.S., which wants to extradite him to San Diego where he was indicted in December on drug charges.(More...)

Uruguay is the first country to legalize the production, sale and consumption of marijuana. It released the new rules today. A copy in Spanish is here.

The government will control every facet -- including setting the price. Pot will initially cost around $1.00 per gram, in an effort to freeze out the black market. The government agency calling the shots is called the Institute for Regulation and Control.

Today we know that trying to eliminate marijuana has not been an effective measure and has only caused more problems. The marijuana market already exists and is controlled by drug trafficking. [More...]

Human Rights Watch has a new report, A Nation Behind Bars, with facts on the current state of our prison nation and recommendations to reduce our over-reliance on incarceration.

Some facts:[More...]